CHAPTER III

Bartholdi’s mighty Liberty loomed high above
the vessel as she grandly swept her way among the
crowded shipping of the Upper Bay. On the huddled
steerage-deck Moresco, quickly and mysteriously free
from durance and not at all abashed by what had happened
to him, led a little cheering, in which his countrymen
joined somewhat faintly. On the promenade-deck
Vanderlyn was acting as the leader of enthusiastic
rooters for his native land.

With his mother, whose interest in the old German
and his daughter he now fostered very eagerly, he
stood close by the rail across which he had vaulted
when Moresco had assaulted the old man. Not even
the enthusiasm of partings from new friends, ship
made, could draw him from this point as the vessel
neared her dock. From it he watched the workings
of the health-and customs-officers among the steerage-passengers,
while he tried to definitely decide upon what means
he might employ to keep from losing sight of the two
people in whom his interest had grown to be so great,
after they were diverted by the formalities of immigration
laws from the line of travel he would naturally follow
when the ship tied up.

“The immigrants are sent to Ellis Island,”
he explained to Mrs. Vanderlyn. “A case
of sheep and goats, all right, according to the tenets
of this land of liberty and lucre. If you’ve
got money you’re a sheep. Columbia, the
Gem of the Ocean, has wide-open arms for you.
No one tries to stop your entrance. If you’ve
none, why you’re the goat and everybody butts
you.”

“Your English is as hard to understand as any
of the foreign languages!” his mother chided.
“Every other word is slang. I haven’t
an idea what you mean.” Down upon the steerage-deck
Moresco, after the faint cheering, was declaiming
loudly, now, about the towering statue and the liberty
she symbolizes.

Towards the mighty effigy the old flute-player’s
eyes were also turned, but the emotions it aroused
in him were very different from those which the Italian
laid his claim to. To him she did not stand for
license, but for a freedom from that mysterious worry,
which, in London, had been so horridly persistent,
which had reached an intolerable climax in Hyde Park,
that day when he had run across the German with the
turned-up moustache, and from which the journey to
America was a veritable flight. The Giant Woman
of the Bay would prove to be to him, the old musician
fondly hoped, what her designer had intended her to
be to all the worried, fleeing people of all the balance
of the earth—­a great torch-bearer who would
light the way to peace and plenty, free from the social
and political turmoil and oppression of the worn-out
lands across the sea. He drew a breath of crisp
air into his lungs, held his daughter closer to his
side, took off his hat and stood agaze while the brisk
wind, strengthening for the moment, blew the folk
around him free of steerage odors, waved his long
grey hair about his forehead and flapped his long grey
coat about his legs until its tails snapped.